Not one to turn the other cheek these days, China issued a report Friday onhuman rights violations by the U.S.

A day after the State Department pointed the finger at China in its annualreport on human rights abuses in 194 countries, Beijing responded in kind,accusing Washington of "posing as the world judge of human rights again."

The Chinese said the U.S. continues to "turn a blind eye to, or dodge andeven cover up rampant human rights abuses on its own territory."

And it aimed at Washington's jugular, stating: "At a time when the world issuffering a serious human rights disaster caused by the U.S. subprimecrisis-induced global financial crisis, the U.S. government still ignoresits own serious human rights problems but revels in accusing othercountries."

China claimed: "The United States with its strong military power has pursuedhegemony in the world, trampling upon the sovereignty of other countries andtrespassing their human rights."

It cited as evidence abuses that were reported in the media and by theUnited Nations in Afghanistan, Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The State Department report criticized Chinese censorship of the Internetand China lobbed the charge right back at the Americans.

"The United States is pushing its hegemony under the pretence of Internetfreedom," it said. "The United States monopolizes the strategic resources ofthe global Internet, and has been retaining a tight grip over the Internetever since its first appearance."

The Chinese also charged: "While advocating 'freedom of speech,' 'freedom ofthe press' and 'Internet freedom,' the U.S. government unscrupulouslymonitors and restricts the citizens' rights to freedom when it comes to itsown interests and needs." It used examples of U.S. wiretapping,eavesdropping and hacking in the name of the War on Terror to prove itscase.

China also claimed jobless and homeless people were so prevalent in the U.S.now that "workers' economic, social and cultural rights cannot beguaranteed."

It chided the U.S. for allowing endemic inequality, saying, "racialdiscrimination is still a chronic problem of the United States." And itadded: "The living conditions of women and children in the United States aredeteriorating and their rights are not properly guaranteed."

The Chinese report relies heavily on articles published in the U.S. media,without ever acknowledging that no Chinese media outlet would ever be ableto scrutinize or hold to account the government in Beijing to such anextent. The tit-for-tat human rights reports are just the latest in a seriesof clashes between the U.S. and China in recent months that have badlyfrayed relations between Beijing and Washington.

There is increasing talk that an upcoming U.S. Treasury report will labelChina a currency manipulator. If that happens, Chinese President Hu Jintaomight easily postpone his state visit to Washington, which many expected tocome as early as April._______________________________________________Rad-Green mailing listRad-Green@lists.econ.utah.edu

For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the AfghanistanWar against what it was told was a "city of 80,000 people" as well as thelogistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was acentral element in the overall impression built up in February that Marjawas a major strategic objective, more important than other district centresin Helmand.

It turns out, however, that the picture of Marja presented by militaryofficials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearestand most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparentlyaimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict.

Marja is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters offarmers' homes or a large agricultural area covering much of the southernHelmand River Valley.

"It's not urban at all," an official of the International SecurityAssistance Force (ISAF), who asked not to be identified, admitted to IPSSunday. He called Marja a "rural community".

"It's a collection of village farms, with typical family compounds," saidthe official, adding that the homes are reasonably prosperous by Afghanstandards.

Richard B. Scott, who worked in Marja as an adviser on irrigation for theU.S. Agency for International Development as recently as 2005, agrees thatMarja has nothing that could be mistaken as being urban. It is an"agricultural district" with a "scattered series of farmers' markets," Scotttold IPS in a telephone interview.

The ISAF official said the only population numbering tens of thousandsassociated with Marja is spread across many villages and almost 200 squarekilometres, or about 125 square miles.

Marja has never even been incorporated, according to the official, but thereare now plans to formalise its status as an actual "district" of HelmandProvince.

The official admitted that the confusion about Marja's population wasfacilitated by the fact that the name has been used both for the relativelylarge agricultural area and for a specific location where farmers havegathered for markets.

However, the name Marja "was most closely associated" with the more specificlocation, where there are also a mosque and a few shops.

That very limited area was the apparent objective of "Operation Moshtarak",to which 7,500 U.S., NATO and Afghan troops were committed amid the mostintense publicity given any battle since the beginning of the war.

So how did the fiction that Marja is a city of 80,000 people get started?

The idea was passed on to the news media by the U.S. Marines in southernHelmand. The earliest references in news stories to Marja as a city with alarge population have a common origin in a briefing given Feb. 2 byofficials at Camp Leatherneck, the U.S. Marine base there.

The Associated Press published an article the same day quoting "Marinecommanders" as saying that they expected 400 to 1,000 insurgents to be"holed up" in the "southern Afghan town of 80,000 people." That languageevoked an image of house to house urban street fighting.

The same story said Marja was "the biggest town under Taliban control" andcalled it the "linchpin of the militants' logistical and opium-smugglingnetwork". It gave the figure of 125,000 for the population living in "thetown and surrounding villages". ABC news followed with a story the next dayreferring to the "city of Marja" and claiming that the city and thesurrounding area "are more heavily populated, urban and dense than otherplaces the Marines have so far been able to clear and hold."

The rest of the news media fell into line with that image of the bustling,urbanised Marja in subsequent stories, often using "town" and "city"interchangeably. Time magazine wrote about the "town of 80,000" Feb. 9, andthe Washington Post did the same Feb. 11.

As "Operation Moshtarak" began, U.S. military spokesmen were portrayingMarja as an urbanised population centre. On Feb. 14, on the second day ofthe offensive, Marine spokesman Lt. Josh Diddams said the Marines were "inthe majority of the city at this point."

He also used language that conjured images of urban fighting, referring tothe insurgents holding some "neighbourhoods".

A few days into the offensive, some reporters began to refer to a "region",but only created confusion rather than clearing the matter up. CNN managedto refer to Marja twice as a "region" and once as "the city" in the sameFeb. 15 article, without any explanation for the apparent contradiction.

The Associated Press further confused the issue in a Feb. 21 story,referring to "three markets in town - which covers 80 square miles…."

A "town" with an area of 80 square miles would be bigger than such U.S.cities as Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh and Cleveland. But AP failed tonotice that something was seriously wrong with that reference.

Long after other media had stopped characterising Marja as a city, the NewYork Times was still referring to Marja as "a city of 80,000", in a Feb. 26dispatch with a Marja dateline.

The decision to hype up Marja as the objective of "Operation Moshtarak" byplanting the false impression that it is a good-sized city would not havebeen made independently by the Marines at Camp Leatherneck.

A central task of "information operations" in counterinsurgency wars is"establishing the COIN [counterinsurgency] narrative", according to the ArmyCounterinsurgency Field Manual as revised under Gen. David Petraeus in 2006.

That task is usually done by "higher headquarters" rather than in the field,as the manual notes.

The COIN manual asserts that news media "directly influence the attitude ofkey audiences toward counterinsurgents, their operations and the opposinginsurgency." The manual refers to "a war of perceptions…conductedcontinuously using the news media."

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of ISAF, was clearly preparing to wagesuch a war in advance of the Marja operation. In remarks made just beforethe offensive began, McChrystal invoked the language of thecounterinsurgency manual, saying, "This is all a war of perceptions."

The Washington Post reported Feb. 22 that the decision to launch theoffensive against Marja was intended largely to impress U.S. public opinionwith the effectiveness of the U.S. military in Afghanistan by showing thatit could achieve a "large and loud victory."

The false impression that Marja was a significant city was an essential partof that message.

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Swing Riots Concert July 17th

In a Benefit Concert for FolkWorks

July 17th at 2 PM

at the

Tropico de Nopal Gallery, in Los Angeles, 1665 Beverly Boulevard, East of Alvarado.

SwingRiots is an LA Jazz Gypsy Balkan Klezmer Folk ensemble with six versatile fully digitized members who recreate the brilliant music of two-finger Belgian Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt— quite a feat, in that it takes them only sixty fingers to accomplish what Django did with two. Perhaps that’s why the word genius is so often found within two syllables of Reinhardt’s legendary name.

But if you close your eyes, it hardly matters; you can drift back in time to the sweltering erotic nights of Paris’s Left Bank in the 1930s, when Reinhardt was remaking the landscape of modern Jazz, and having to relearn the guitar after suffering major burns in a 1928 fire that changed his life and modern music forever. Without the use of the third and fourth fingers on his left hand he played everything with just the two he had—and that proved to be enough.

Ed Pearl has done a bit of his own reshaping of the musical landscape of Los Angeles, as the creator of the legendary folk music club The Ash Grove in 1958, and had Django Reinhardt not passed away in 1953, he would surely have graced the Ash Grove stage as well, along with Muddy Waters, Bill Monroe, the New Lost City Ramblers, The Greenbriar Boys, Phil Ochs, Mance Libscomb, Lightning Hopkins, Flatt and Scruggs, Mississippi John Hurt, Jackie DeShannon and Ry Cooder.

Now Ed has embarked on a new venture, catching up with lost time as it were, and will present SwingRiots in his new summer concert series sponsored by Ash Grove Music (www.ashgrovemusic.com).

It will be a doubly special event, since it is a benefit concert for FolkWorks, LA’s free and only folk music magazine, now in its tenth year of continuous publication, covering the waterfront of LA’s sometimes bewildering variety of folk related solo performers, dance and instrumental groups and festivals, as well as national touring artists that come through town.

FolkWorks (www.folkworks.org) was just honored this past May with the Topanga Banjo-Fiddle Contest Music Legend Award for 2011, and needs the influx of funds from this extraordinary concert to keep the presses rolling, as it tries valiantly to beat the odds that have made magazine publishing a quixotic and oft-times heroic endeavor.

So support the Ash Grove, support FolkWorks, and enjoy an unparalleled afternoon of world music from the Lost Generation that these wonderful Los Angeles musicians have rediscovered, mastered and made their own. For this musical experience of a lifetime SwingRiots will be joined by vocal duet Jess Basta & Christine Tavares, formerly of VOCO in a variety of Yiddish and early jazz standards. Don’t you dare miss it! --Ross Altman